regent
Gold Member
- Jan 30, 2012
- 10,459
- 1,148
Liberal of the time has no correlation to what's liberal today. Today's liberal is a strong central government type with little if any state power. It's a disservice to call the founders liberal since we apply modern definitions to words.The government the framers altered was powerless, so small it almost didn't exist the framers took that amost nonexistant government and made it into a powerful government, able to tax, to control, make war and on and on.
The framers were of different political pursuasions but they created a government based on the liberal period of their time, the Age of Enlightenment. Since that period, America has become even more liberal, too fast for some and not fast enough for others.
Both liberalism and conervatism have core values and those core values do not change, the means to achieve those liberal core values do change however, and many mistake the changes to achieve libralism as the core values. Find the core values of each and what they want to achieve begins to make sense. The size of govenment is a mean to achieve what each party believes it is not part of the definition. Might read the Declaration of Independence for a clue to liberalism, but notice Jefferson changed property to happiness.